The bedtime ritual

"Here's how it goes down.

"We eat our dinner. We have a bath. This is important--when dad tried to skip the bath on Sunday because we'd got home late from the shops, I had to correct him by saying: "Need bathtime!"

"In the bath, we do experiments mostly focusing on the physics of buoyancy and viscosity. Buoyancy: pour water into the hull of our toy boat. After a certain point, the boat is observed to sink. Viscosity: get dad to wind up the paddling turtle toy. When it's swimming, remove the toy from the water. As they are removed, a speeding up of the paddles is observed.

"After this we drink warm milk from our sippy cup and sit on someone's lap wrapped in a towel. We may play "this little piggy" at this point. Mum or dad will try to clean my teeth. This is not to be tolerated, although I will consent to suck the minty paste off the brush. Then, I get into my bedtime clothes and we go to my room.

"Once there, we read two or three stories while we listen to my musical bedtime seahorse. I have to kiss all the zebras on the carpet, my rocking horse, and the horse on the back of the door. And mum or dad lay me in bed and kiss me goodnight. Sometimes I throw a toy out of the cot and call out, "Where's bunny gone?" to check they're paying attention. So far they've always come in."

I remember about a year ago reading about now you have to establish a bedtime ritual to help your toddler get to sleep. This alarmed me a bit. I've never designed a ritual before. Would it need to involve chanting? Chicken sacrifice?

Well I needn't have worried. As you can see, we have a pretty complex bedtime ritual but I can't remember Kate and I ever sitting down with a blank sheet of paper to work out what it should be. And it's not that Anya's come up with it all, either. We've really worked it out together, as a collaborative process. Which is probably why it feels so good.